I have always believed the plan was that after GWB won his second term, Dick Cheney would become ‘ill’ and Ms Rice would become VP. Good, bad, or indifferent, it would have set up a 2008 nightmare scenario for the democraps, running against a woman and a black.

Unfortunately, when she went up for Sec of State, the democraps in the Senate really played rough, and she lost all further taste for politics. Witness her relative absence during the last six years.